Einstein's vitarka mudra

3quarksdaily links to a review with a photo of Einstein in 'vitarka mudra'. According to 3quarksdaily "Mr. Schweber, an emeritus professor of physics and the history of ideas at Brandeis, explains that Einstein adopted the gesture from Hindu and Buddhist practices. Both the Hindu god Vishnu and the Buddha himself are often portrayed with their left hands in this posture; known in Sanskrit as the vitarka gesture, it represents "compassionate teaching" as well as, for Buddhists, the union of wisdom and method. In Einstein's case, it serves as a sign not of the public figure he had become but of the man hidden within."

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has somewhat dubious origins ( Even now, some of the names in the list of trustees can cause worry) but now "is the second most important biomedical research organization in America, perhaps in the world." It seems to have come with a scheme HHMI Professors, somewhat in the spirit of Einstein's gesture. According to GrandDoctor who wrote the above article "But the focus of the HHMI Professors program is not on research, per se; rather, the program aims to enhance the development of the next generation of biomedical scientists by drawing them into research and related activities at an early age. The goal of the program, as HHMI puts it, is to "bring the creativity [HHMI Professors] have shown in the laboratory into the classroom." .....Louisiana State University-based Isiah Warner is a rare breed: an African-American chemistry professor at a major university. The pedagogical approach of his HHMI-funded program is equally rare; rather than selecting research students with impeccable academic credentials, Warner's program admits only students with grade point averages between 2.5 and 3.0. Young students in the program work intensively with a mentor who helps them master science and improve their study skills. Warner's program aims to develop a community of people who strive for self-improvement and take responsibility for their own academic careers. As I understand it, students whose GPAs get too high are kicked out of the program. Perhaps it would be better to say they graduate.

Harvard's Losick and Northwestern's Godwin both target students from underrepresented groups very early in their college careers. Losick identifies students during their first or second undergraduate year by means of a complex selection process, then partners them with research mentors. Godwin takes accepted students who enroll in introductory chemistry in their first year and involves them in efforts to monitor lead levels in low-income housing in the Chicago area. Although their approaches are quite different, both aim to inspire a personal interest in science and to build the confidence students need to make it through a rigorous (and sometimes hostile) training process.
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"Manny Ares of the University of California, Santa Cruz, set up a second lab, which he runs all year long in parallel with his main research lab. Students come in and out but often sign up for multiple sessions. He is essentially running a research program as a class. Students are doing extraordinary science. They are looking at [genetic] splicing in humans in the malaria parasite Plasmodium spp. Utpal Banerjee of UCLA is running a research program looking a mutations in proteins in Drosophila eyes. Sarah Elgin of Washington University in St. Louis is also doing a sequencing project, in conjunction with the sequencing center there. Ellen Fanning of Vanderbilt created a program based on the notion of a community of scholars that brings students in for a summer research program at a young age."

Real research, real attention, effective teaching: Implicit in many of these projects--but explicit in Ares's plan--is the notion that the division between research and teaching is artificial. "Research is the act of teaching ourselves, an act that is very similar to teaching others," Ares says. Ares aims to train, not just research scientists, but what he calls "teacher-scholars."
According to the GrandDoctor (the article was written in 2003)"This is not some half-baked, idealistic scheme conceived by bookish educational theorists. It's imperative for the future health of America's scientific organism. Outside HHMI, however, it isn't happening."